A ddress of hon. elihu root to the 

LEGISLATURE OF NEW YORK AC¬ 
CEPTING HIS ELECTION TO THE UNITED 
STATES SENATE, JANUARY 28, 1909. o o o 







Address of Hon. Elihu Root to the Legislature 

i. 

of New York Accepting His Election to 
the United States Senate, January 28, 1909. 

“I have to thank you and I do thank you most sincerely 
for the very great honor which you have conferred upon me 
and for the great opportunity that you have set before me— 
to represent in the Senate of the United States the State of 
my birth and of my life. 

‘‘I shall do my best to justify your selection, with not too 
much confidence in the result, because I do not think that as 
a rule lawyers who have been many years at the bar and 
whose habits have become fixed make very good legislators 
when they are not caught young, and I have a rather un¬ 
comfortable sense that it will be quite impossible for me to 
live up to the many kindly and delightful things that have 
been said about me by my friends in the State of New York 
during the past few months. 

“I have come to Albany in the hope of meeting the men 
who are leaders of opinion and of political action in the 
State of New York and who are, as they ought to be, in the 
two houses which legislate for the State. 

“It is my strong desire to get into touch with you as the 
representatives of the people in the State Legislature/ I 
have been for the greater part of the past ten years in Wash- 


2 


ington, engrossed in the affairs of the national Government 
which have lain outside even of the limits of the United 
States, and I feel that I am a little out of touch with the 
current affairs of the State. 

“I should like to get back into the same knowledge and 
familiarity with them that I had years ago when I was here 
within the State all the time. And I should be glad to estab¬ 
lish such a personal relation of acquaintance with every 
member of the Senate and the Assembly that if you have 
anything to say to me as your Senator in Congress you will 
feel at liberty to do so and that if I have anything to say to 
you I shall feel at liberty to say it. (Applause.) 

“I mean this not merdy with regard to the filling of 
offices (laughter), although every Senator of the United 
States is charged with the duty of representing his State 
in regard to appointments to Federal office from that State 
and in that State. He is a part of the appointing power, 
and it is his duty to see that as far as the exercise of his office, 
in vote and in advice, is concerned his .State has the benefit 
of its citizens’ knowledge of character and reputation in their 
own communities, so that if a man has lived a good and use¬ 
ful and active life, is respected by his neighbors, is esteemed 
by them worthy of honor and capable of performing useful 
public service, this may be made known to the President in 
Washington through the voice of his representative in the 
Senate of the United States. 

I 



3 


But I mean more than that. Our Government is becom¬ 
ing complicated in a very high degree. Difficult questions 
are continually presented which affect the interests of every 
State, and the wide and immense and varied interests of 
the State of New York are particularly liable to be affected 
by a great variety of measures which come before the na¬ 
tional Congress. I would be glad to have you express your 
opinions upon all measures which appear to you to affect the 
interests of the State. 

“I shall be glad to be at liberty to consult you freely, as 
occasion offers, upon the practical operation of measures 
pending before the national Congress. 

“If you think it will be beneficial to the State of New 
York, for example, as I now think it would be, to have a 
parcels post provision included in our postal laws (applause) 
so that the 39,000 rural free delivery carriers instead of 
driving around the country with empty buggies, as they do 
now, shall earn enough to pay their salary by carrying small 
packages to the people they serve—if you think that would 
be beneficial to the interests of the State of New York, I 
should be glad to have you say so, and if you think I am 
wrong in that I should be glad to have you say it. 

“There is more to be considered, however, than the mere 
interest of the State of New York in the relation which ex¬ 
ists between you and your Senators in Congress. The dif¬ 
ferent States of the Union are no longer isolated communi- 


4 


ties. They are welded together in their interests, business 
and social, and the action of every one is felt upon every 
other. The interests of every one are bound up in the pros¬ 
perity and the welfare of every other. 

“With the great and complicated problems which are pres¬ 
sing upon our national Government, it is becoming every 
year more apparent that the people of no State can live to 
themselves alone, and that they have set before them as the 
highest of duties, the obligation to contribute their share to 
the solving of the great national problems for the mainte¬ 
nance and furtherance of that common interest which is vital 
to the people of every State but confined by the limits of no 
State. 

“Upon these great questions I ask your help in the per¬ 
formance of those duties which you have imposed upon me. 

“The intimate connection between the people of every lo¬ 
cality and of every other State, largely brought about by the 
increase of communication, the passing to and fro of the 
trains upon our great railroads, the telegraph and the tele¬ 
phone, the extension of business which knows no State lines, 
and the substitution of great national centres of business for 
the old State centres of business, the development of commer¬ 
cial and manufacturing and social life along national lines, 
has forced upon the national Government the performance 
of a great variety of duties which formerly were performed 
by the States within the limits of their comparatively isolated 
communities. 


5 


“By the exercise of the powers granted in the interstate 
commerce clause of the Constitution the national Govern¬ 
ment is extending its power over the operation of our‘rail¬ 
roads, our steamship lines, our telegraph, our express com¬ 
panies. By the exercise of the taxing power it is regulating 
the action of the people all over the country, as for instance 
in the oleomargarine act. By the exercise still again of the 
commerce power it is controlling the adulteration of food and 
deceptive practices in the sale of food, as in the pure food 
law. 

“The activities of the general Government are continually 
widening, step by step, covering ground formerly occupied 
by State action. 

“That is not a matter of what we wish or what we do not 
wish; it is not a matter of political programme or platform; 
it is plain fact to be seen by any one and a fact to be consid¬ 
ered. 

“There is one advantage, a great advantage, which has 
come from it, is coming from it; that is, that we are acquir¬ 
ing effective control over the great developments of busi¬ 
ness activity in our country in many directions to a degree 
which could not be possible by State action that we have 
growing a strong, virile, competent and effective national 
Government; that we have built up a great national power 
respected and honored throughout the world; that America 
is a name for pride and satisfaction; that from all external 


6 


attack this powerful national Government protects, and ef¬ 
fectively protects, our homes, our families and our lives. 

“But there are two dangers coming with this same devel¬ 
opment. One is the danger that the national Government 
will break down in its machinery through the burden which 
threatens to be cast upon it. This country is too large, its 
people are too numerous, its interests are too varied and its 
activity too great for one central Government at Washington 
to carry the burden of governing all of the country in its 
local concerns, doing justice to the rights of the individual 
in every section, because that justice can be done only 
through intelligent information and consideration. 

“And the mass of business that is now pressing upon the 
legislative and executive and judicial branches of our Gov¬ 
ernment in Washington seems to have come about to the 
limit of their capacity for the transaction of governmental 
business. 

“The other danger is the danger of breaking down the 
local self government of the States. After all, the thing that 
we have government for is ultimately the preservation of our 
homes and our individual liberty. And we ought to be at 
liberty to regulate the affairs of our homes in accordance 
with our own ideas. 

The tendency to vest all powers in the central government 
at Washington is likely to produce the decadence of the pow¬ 
ers of the States. Now, do not misunderstand me. I am a 


7 


convinced and uncompromising nationalist of the school 
of Alexander Hamilton. (Applause.) 

“I believe in the exercise of the executive, the legislative 
and the judicial powers of the national Government to the 
full limit of the constitutional grants, as those grants were 
construed by John Marshall, and would be construed by 
him to-day. (Applause.) 

“But I believe that the founders of the Republic builded 
more wisely than they knew, when they set the limits be¬ 
tween the exercise of that national power and the exercise of 
the local powers of the States. And while I believe in the 
exercise of the national power throughout the province of 
the constitutional grants of national power, I believe also in 
the preservation of State power within the limits of its con¬ 
stitutional authority. 

“Further than that, I believe that the essential quality of 
free government is to be found in the observance by all pub¬ 
lic officers of the limitations set by law upon their powers. 
Once admit the right of public officers to disregard limita¬ 
tions upon their powers and you are launched on the course 
by which good men come to be benevolent despots, with the 
inevitable corollary that bad men have the opportunity to be¬ 
come tyrannical dictators. 

“Evidently, if the powers of the States are to be preserv¬ 
ed and their authority is to be continued, the States must 


8 


exercise their power. The only way to maintain the powers 
of government is to govern. 

“Let me say that the men who make the most noise about 
State rights are very apt to be the men who are the most 
willing and the most desirous to have the national Govern- 
men step in and usurp the functions of a State when there is 
an appropriation carried with the usurpation. 

“The men who are found opposing the maintenance of 
the authority of the treaty provisions of the United States 
made under the express grant of power in the Constitution 
are apt to be the very men who are anxious to have the 
Government come into their States and spend no end of 
money in doing the things that the States ought to do them¬ 
selves in the exercise of their powers. But the invitation of 
the national Government to assume this and that duty within 
the limits of a State is an invitation to set up national power 
to the ultimate exclusion of State power. 

“Because I believe in maintaining the two grants of 
power of the Constitution, maintaining the national power 
to its full limit and still preserving the State power, I am 
opposed to everything that tends to belittle, to discredit 
or to weaken the authority of the Legislature of the State. 

“You cannot take power away from public bodies without 
having the character of those bodies deteriorate. For this 
reason I am opposed to the direct election of Senators, as I 
am opposed to the initiative and referendum, because these 


9 


things are based upon the idea that the people cannot elect 
Legislatures whom they trust. 

“They proceed upon the idea of abandoning the attempt 
to elect trustworthy and competent State Legislatures. But 
if you abandon that attempt, if you begin to legislate or to 
amend constitutions upon that theory, what becomes of all 
the other vast powers of the State Legislatures, in maintain¬ 
ing the system of local self-government under the Constitu¬ 
tion ? 

“If the people of any State are not satisfied to trust their 
Legislature to discharge the constitutional duty of electing 
Senators, let them cure their own faults and elect a Legisla¬ 
ture that they can trust. Untimately, in the last analysis, we 
must come down for successful government to the due per¬ 
formance of the citizens’ duty at the polls, and there is no 
reason to believe that the citizens would perform their duty 
in the direct election of Senators or in voting upon the initia¬ 
tive or the referendum any better than they perform it in the 
election of members of the Senates and the Assemblies of the 
States. I am opposed to all steps that proceed upon the 
theory that the people of our States are to abandon the duty 
of making their State Legislatures able and honored bodies 
competent to perform the great duties of legislation for those 
great commonwealths. (Applause.) 

“Let me say another word which directly bears upon the 
relations between the performance of your duties and the 


10 


performance of duties in the body to which you have sent 
me. The intimate relations between the people who live on 
one side and the other of different State lines, and the in¬ 
creasing interdependence of people upon each other in wide 
communities that are not determined by State lines, have 
created a situation where, in the exercise of a great many of 
the powers that are reserved in the Constitution to the States, 
regard ought to be had, not merely to the direct interests of 
the people within the limits of the State, but also to the 
claims of neighborhood, the comity that should exist between 
different communities, the necessity for adjustment of rela¬ 
tive rights and interests. 

“In other words, there is occasion to consider the relations 
of different States or different communities in different 
States in the exercise of your powers as well as in the exer¬ 
cise of the national powers. 

“Take for example the question about the pollution of the 
harbor of New York, with New York on one side and New 
Jersey on the other. It is not a subject I have studied, but 
it is a subject which I observe is up for consideration. I be¬ 
lieve suit has been brought by the Attorney-General of the 
United States regarding it. 

“The States of New York and New Jersey ought to agree 
upon a reasonable and just solution of the subject without 
any lawsuit from the Attorney-General of the United States. 

“There are coming up continually questions in which the 


11 


legislation of one State will vitally affect the interests of 
another. Upon those questions it ought not to be necessary 
for people to press the national Government to come in and 
usurp the functions of the State in order to have uniformity 
of treatment on the subject. The States themselves ought to 
concur, consult, exercise consideration and good neighbor¬ 
hood toward each other in the performance of State func¬ 
tions in matters which affect other States. 

“The Constitution contemplates such situations, for it pro¬ 
vides that States may make agreements with each other by 
the consent of Congress. It is not necessary that Congress 
shall come in to stretch and strain its authority, but just in 
so far as the States neglect to perform their duties in such 
matters, just so far they invite the pressure upon Congress to 
lead it to attempt to remedy the evils by stretching the na- 
ional authority. 

“We have much to learn. We have much to do. The 
growing complications and many problems continually pres¬ 
enting themselves and taxing the best thought of the most 
experienced public servants; the problems of the future, the 
solutions of which are still undiscovered; the other problems 
certain to rise that we have not yet discerned—all these are 
making it more and more vital to the interests of every home 
in every State that the public servants of the State and the 
nation shall co-operate in the performance of the functions of 


12 

government with a spirit of good citizenship, of patriotism 
and of loyalty to the Constitution under which we live. 

“To that co-operation jointly with you I pledge myself 
for the next six years, if I live so long. 

“I thank you for your kind attention.” 















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